This Washington Post piece isn’t local, but in the sense that CONSTANT STRIVING FOR EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION is a Grosse Pointe value — what? who’s yelling? I’M NOT YELLING — it should be of interest to at least some parents here. It’s a lengthy explanation by a retired high school teacher on, for lack of a better term, “why Johnny can’t think,” and blame the No Child Left Behind, testing-uber-alles mindset. There’s also a long section on my current bete noire, the AP class, a racket if I ever saw one:

…the AP course required that a huge amount of content be covered, meaning that too much effort is spent on learning information and perhaps insufficient time on wrestling with the material at a deeper level. I learned to balance these seemingly contradictory requirements. For much of the content I would give students summary information, sufficient to answer multiple-choice questions and to get some of the points on rubrics for the free response questions. That allowed me more time for class discussions and for relating events in the news to what we learned in class, making the class more engaging for the students and resulting in deeper learning because the discussions were relevant to their lives.

Worth your time, no matter where your children are on the education path.